Perrysburg Journal

LAND MONOPOLY.

The Chicago Tribune heartily endorses the smallest plank, yet one of the most important, in the Republican platform of this State. Like the tariff question the land subsidy is the most difficult of comprehension, there being so many interests identified, and at stake, and with the limited discussion as yet of these questions, the mass of the voting population of this country is illy prepared to discern the right from the wrong. As the mass of community mainly obtain knowledge of the affairs of the government by reading and thinking, we endeavor to place before our readers the opinions of the leading journals, as well as giving our own views, on the leading political issues of the day. Many questions are frequently carried in all deliberative bodies which, with a judicious discussion to bring out the merits and demerits, would have been the reverse. As there are some new ideas contained in the Tribune's remarks, we give them in full below:

The Ohio Republican State Convention of Ohio adopts a sound plank in its platform, which we hope to see borrowed by all the other State Conventions. It is as follows:

"Resolved, That the policy of granting subsidies of public lands to corporations and monopolies, is unqualifiedly condemned."

The time has long since passed when railroads needed any coddling or nursing at the government expense. On the contrary, they are the most imperious and aggrandizing of the moneyed institutions of the country, and the one most prone to influence Legislatures by corrupt means to extend them privileges which are in conflict with the interests of the masses of the people. There have doubtless been instances where grants of land or loans of credit have caused the building of railroads a few years earlier than they would otherwise have been built, and so have opened up new territories to settlement and production. In such cases these roads have been the indispensable means of producing wealth, a share of which they are permitted to monopolize. They have given value to the lands which have been granted them. But of late the projects of road-building are the mere incidents to a gigantic plan for monopolizing land enough for several States, and holding it out of the market until it has risen in value, thus impeding the settlement which the grant was designed to hasten. The full measure of the evils of this system must be more plainly felt as the regions in which these grants have been made come to be settled up. Then the cry will come up from hundreds of thousands of settlers looking for homesteads, or for land whose price bears some relation to the profit they can make by cultivating it, that the entire available uncultivated lands of the nation has been surrendered to a few grasping monopolies. Such a disposition of our public lands will then be seen to have robbed the people of every dollar that has been given to the monopolies, and to have been a hindrance rather than an aid to the country. Let every convention in the land adopt such plain and pointed resolutions on this question that the next Congress will assemble fully instructed, and will not dare to grant a single acre on any pretense. Let the land be reserved for those who will till it.